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Re: Things you can do with Cygwin



> If that were the case, then a GPL'ed X-server would simply not be
> suitable for running anything but GPL code. Cygwin/XFree is one such
> server.

No, because they'd be two separate works.  If you modified the X
server to use a non-standard protocol, and wrote a GPL'd program that
required that non-standard protocol, then it would be one work.  But
since a GPL'd program that uses the standard X protocol could use your
X server, or any other X server, they would be separate works and the
GPL on the application would not effect the X server.

> No, there is no legal exception clause for this in the Linux kernel
> as far as I can tell. The only thing related to this would be the
> small note at the top of the COPYING file in the Linux kernel
> sources:

That's the exception I was talking about.

> "NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
> services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal
> use of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived
> work".

See?  The authors of the "library" (the kernel, in this case) are
exercising their right to allow you to use non-GPL'd programs in a
certain way with their code.  As the authors, they have that right.
They are giving up any rights they may have to claim that programs
that interact with the kernel via standard calls are derived works.

> As for libc, it is LGPL.

It's also a shared library, and comes with Linux distributions and its
own sources.  Thus, regardless of what kind of application you sell,
the user still has the right, freedom, and abililty to change their
libc and use it with the application.  That's what the LGPL requires,
and it's automatically handled by the way libc itself is distributed.

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